


Mirror Box

by anna_bird, sasha_feather



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Cyborgs, Disability, M/M, Music, Prosthesis, Singing, Slash, assistive technology, prosthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-09
Updated: 2009-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:15:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anna_bird/pseuds/anna_bird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_feather/pseuds/sasha_feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Felix thinks about music at times like this. He hasn't sung for a day now, but the words and the sprawling tone of the notes run through his head.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Box

**Author's Note:**

> Written with anna_bird.  
> beta by izzy_beth and were_duck.  
> Set after "Sine Qua Non".  
> What is a mirror box? [Find out here.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box)

_Day One_   
Doc Cottle starts him on PT the first day Felix Gaeta goes without singing. Maybe the Doc takes it as a sign of progress, rather than what Felix knows it is: he's done performing his pain for the infirmary. He stops singing and talking full stop, but it doesn't keep the nurses from lifting him into a chair and wheeling him to his appointment.

His physical therapist is Radna du Rais, one of Ishay's friends who he's seen around the mess and Joe's. She's not pretty - her face is slumped like something spoiled, and when she smiles it doesn't improve anything. She looks at him in the wheelchair and says, "Wellnow, Mister Gaeta," in a Picon accent that makes him want to gouge out his eardrums. He can't breathe, even with the stupid canula pressed into his nose. Why a wheelchair, anyway? Crutches would have been less pathetic.

The first session is all about standing up. Du Rais helps him. It's like school dance class without the freedom to walk away and push your back against the wall.

Felix thinks about music at times like this. He hasn't sung for a day now, but the words and the sprawling tone of the notes run through his head. _Open your mouth and let them out,_ he thinks. His leg twitches, and he flexes his toes and reaches down to scratch at his knee, and his fingernails sink into the nappy wool blanket.

_Frakking_ \- He can't even say it. He can't say anything. He sings, but not out loud, and it winds and swells up inside him until he's tight and exhausted with unvoiced notes.

 

_Day Five_  
is the first day he sees Anders. Oh sure, he felt the odd watchful presence early after the surgery, but since then he's never caught more than a shadow behind the medlab curtains. He's working with Du Rais on the bars, first day for them, and it's surprisingly easy at first; reminds him of Basic and the ridiculous, ridiculous jumping through tires and climbing walls and gods know what else he's obliterated from memory.

Fifteen minutes later, he's sweating and cursing under his breath, and Du Rais is chewing her bottom lip. He looks away from her - _does she sigh and drip pity like this over all her patients?_ \- and catches a flash of a familiar face across the room, stubbly and wide-eyed and hard. Anders. It's only a flash, because as their eyes connect Anders ducks back behind a cart loaded with bedpans and is gone.

 

_Day Seven_  
They let him leave the infirmary. He's got private quarters now and a private head—a temporary but welcome luxury. Du Rais has to help him out of the wheelchair and into the narrow bed. Felix's arms are strong, but they'll need to get stronger.

The room is quiet, just the familiar hum of the _Galactica_ all around him; a nice change from the strange instrument sounds of the infirmary, from the hacking coughs and moans of the other patients. But there's no one snoring or shifting in their sleep, here, either; no other warm bodies in this space, no shared dreams mumbled. He reaches his arms out and brushes his fingertips against the bulkheads, craving contact. He thinks about the Caprican Symphony Orchestra, the quiet orchestra hall, filled with thousands of hushed, expectant faces, and then an infinite spiraling of sound. It doesn't help, because it's all gone now.

 

_Day Eight_  
He awakes to strange pains: his jaw, his neck, the long muscles of his back hurting. And the tingling, pinprick pains in his phantom leg, ever-present. Someone—not Du Rais this time, someone quiet and easy—comes to help him out of bed, into the chair, from the chair to the head, washed, dressed, medicated…

He sees Anders again in the mess. Their eyes meet before darting away.

\-----

Anders can't get the moment out of his head. Finger on the trigger, a moment engraved in memory, a gunshot, the smell of powder in the hot air. That ship was always so damn hot. A crack, and then Gaeta started screaming.

He's not even sure what happened, or why. He knows that he did it for Kara. He did it all for Kara: and now she won't even touch him. She'll meet his eyes these days, but as if from a distance, as if her perspective has shifted to something farther on, as if Anders is nothing but a distraction.

It might be the ship. _Galactica_ feels like home, yeah, as much as it can when home is portioned between a few familiar rooms. But it's not his home, not really. It doesn't belong to him the way it belongs to Kara.

It might be him, the other surfacing him. But Anders won't think about that. He doesn't remember much about his meetings with the other three, these days; doesn't remember if they're still meeting in cluttered storage compartments just to reassure each other, to discuss their continued incognito status – or if the meetings have turned into something else. _Strategy. Contingency._ These are some of the keywords he turns over in his brain, words spoken in Tory's voice. He's seen how she looks at him after he returned from the Demetrius, her eyes dark with pity and disdain for his weakness. But he can't care, can't pay attention. He's locked with Gaeta, Gaeta's screams, Gaeta's lonely ballad.

Leave it, he thinks, and he tries to leave it, to let it get buried by the detritus of the daily tasks, by a few throat-burning glasses of whiskey, by sleep.

\-----

_Day Twelve_  
Du Rais brings a large case to their next session. They meet in the makeshift physiotherapy room: a medical storage room some heavy-hitting paramedics cleared out earlier. She natters on about pre- and post-surgical management and the lack of proper fitting prosthetics and limb care and range of motion, and he's really getting bored here. He could be, oh, practicing with the bed trapeze, discovering new corridors that are unnavigable by wheelchair, massaging his stump, for frak's sake.

"We're working with Athena," Du Rais says. "She's anxious to, well, prove herself after the whole – that is, she wanted to help you out. So Doc Cottle and some of the scientists and me, we've cobbled something together using some of their technology." Du Rais exudes confidence and smiles, but Felix sees her hand tremble on the case.

"Cobbled together?" He wants to tell her to start over again, because he assumes that "their" means Cylon, but she flips open the case and turns it so he can see.

A shiny metal leg is packed into foam. He takes in the smooth lump of calf that's easily twice the size of his existing one, the dark worn ankle joints, and the strange double-toed hoof. It seems too small for what it is and more than a little dinged up.

"You want to put a _Centurion_ leg on me?"

"Want is really the wrong word," Du Rais says hastily, but Felix has already wheeled himself around.

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not exactly – you think anyone would trust a human who did –" he snaps a hand at the gleaming leg. "It might make the sounds they make. When they move."

"Felix – that's not the point. Well, not the right point. The right point is walking, and our prosthetics lab is nonexistent. Athena said – "

_"Shut up."_ He is so furious his fingers are sweaty and slipping on the hand rims, which is embarrassing. "You think having a Cylon leg is going to in any way help me get back on active duty?"

"Maybe."

"Bullshit." He gropes at the door until a nurse silently pushes past and opens it.

 

_Day Fourteen_  
Ishay is the only one who comes to visit him. She's brought her daughter along this time. Treva is ten, bright, curious; one of the few people of any age who actually seems young.

"Can I see your stump?"

Ishay tries to shush her, but Felix can't help but smile. His trouser leg has been cut short and folded, and he opens it to show her. Her eyes go wide, scared but strangely delighted.

"Felix," Ishay says. She's apparently decided to chide him instead of her daughter. He looks up at Ishay: everyone is upwards now. Ishay's eyes are so full of pain that Felix has to look away.

 

_Day Fifteen_  
Crutches, finally. Aluminum, clunky, and they make his arms and shoulders hurt in a different way than the chair did. Du Rais beams at him. He scowls back.

He goes to the mess hall at odd times to avoid the crowds. He can't navigate around everyone else; he worries about tripping and falling. He wouldn't put it past some people here to trip him deliberately. One of the cooks carries his meal out to him, nods at him respectfully. Not everyone's an asshole.

The slide of a tray, someone sitting down across from him: it's Anders. Frak. Felix reaches for caustic sarcasm but only musters tiredness. "What is it, Anders? You want the other leg too?"

Anders only grimaces. "I only wanted to say my piece."

"So say it."

Anders looks him in the eyes for a long moment. He stabs his protein ration with his fork. "I'm sorry."

"Apology not accepted." Felix looks at his unappetizing tray and waits for Anders to leave. But Anders doesn't leave. So they sit without talking, and they shove food into their mouths like it's a race and when Anders reaches for his empty tray, Felix elbows it into Anders' lap.

\-----

Anders has never been one for self-reflection. If it feels right, he does it, and life works itself out. He needs to talk to Gaeta, needs to see him. Gaeta's anger feels right. Everyone should be angry with him, but only Felix really is.

He thinks about it as he sponges the hot sauce packet off his crotch.

\-----

 

_Day Twenty_  
Du Rais keeps trying. She enlists help: Ishay knows about the frakking Centurion leg, and she's come to the physiotherapy session.

"It is just a tool, Felix. Metal and wiring," Du Rais coaxes. "It's not a Centurion anymore, only a shell."

"Look, you can walk with the crutches and you can use the chair," Ishay says. "You've learned them now. You can give this a trial run. An experiment." She levels her dark eyes at him, and they are full of warmth this time, and faith, and a hint of challenge. She knows him too well.

Still, perhaps out of spite, he waits a day before he lets them put the alien metal to him.

 

_Day Twenty-two_  
It's cold against him, even with the pads. He fancies he can feel a buzz sneaking up from his knee, which is not unpleasant but definitely weird. But at least it doesn't try to crawl up his body and strangle him with its toes. Du Rais takes his crutches and makes him try to stand between the rails. The toes flex as he eases his weight onto the leg. It feels like kneeling on a stilt.

"Try taking a step. It's supposed to respond to your movements."

She sounds very far away. Felix balances on his good leg (does that make this thing his evil leg? Certainly, in the eyes of 99.999, wait, yeah, 100 percent of the crew, it is) and lifts. His thigh jerks with the weight, and hey, he's been practicing, but it's heavy.

Lifting is a chore. Lifting, lifting, lifting – _hey, help out a bit here, would you?_ he thinks, and he doesn't know who he's thinking to, Du Rais or Ishay or his own weakened muscles. It doesn't matter, because the leg is the one that responds. He hears – wait, he _feels,_ how can he feel – a strange thrum somewhere underneath the metal, a kind of fizz that reverberates up and around him, and the excessive weight diminishes.

Felix walks the length of rails. The leg almost carries him. It makes his real leg flop a bit, and he feels something akin to panic unwrap in his gut.

Her face grayish, Du Rais unbuckles the thing. "That's enough for today. We've. Uh. Got to take it slow. Also, you're to report any bizarre symptoms to me or Doc. Any science stuff, too."

 

_Day Twenty-seven_  
He convinces Du Rais to let him keep the leg overnight. He's not sure what he'll do with it. Try to jump rope? Sleep with it? Du Rais reminds him he's not to shower with it, and he rolls his eyes. She's probably more afraid that if left alone with it long enough, he'll pick it to pieces. She's likely right. He watches as she leaves, and he wonders what she does after their sessions. They've had almost a month of daily close contact, and he's never thought about her after they part.

But Felix has other concerns. He's starting to accept the leg. It's unnerving, even after five days of training and balancing and doing Du Rais' kindergarten exercises, the leg has yet to trip him up. He's starting to worry about how it will look in the corridors. Maybe he could fit pants over it – or a big sock. For now he packs it into the case and an orderly carries it back to his quarters while he jog-hops along behind on his crutches.

Other problems. Anders accosts him at odd moments. It's always in public, usually around some sort of necessary operation like food or pissing or his hard-won hour in the science lab. Felix starts going to the mess at odd hours and wolfing his food. But it's hard to hurry on crutches, and Anders usually catches him somewhere around the doorway, someplace where he can put an arm up and stop Felix just like that, his eyes and sometimes mouth pouring out apologies while he unconsciously (or is it deliberately?) flaunts his body, his working limbs.

Felix bribes Treva to bring him a pile of package rations so he can stay the hell out of the mess. After she leaves, he opens the case slowly, the latches snapping loudly.

It's still cold. It's _always_ cold. He doesn't understand it, after feeling that thrum like it was in his own toes, his own calf. Like there should be heat generated by liquid metal blood or nanogears or whatever it is that powers the Cylons.

He levers himself onto the bed, tosses the crutches and puts on the leg. _His_ leg.

The door clangs as someone opens it from outside.

_Treva_, he thinks, and searches for something to throw over his lap, to cover the leg.

It's not Treva. It's Anders. He carries a tray of the reconstituted muck from the algae planet and something else stuck under his arm, wrapped in a dishtowel. When Anders sees Felix and the leg, he drops everything and stumbles back against the door. The tray crashes with a splatter of protein muck, the something else donks onto the floor. Anders is breathing too fast; his face is a bleak open page, his eyes dark and saying no no no. He all but throws himself back out the door, and Felix is alone.

He waits a long time before he gets up to deal with the mess. He finds the something else where it's rolled out of the towel into the corner – it's an old bottle of Tyrol's bilgeswill, so popular before the induction of Joe's.

Felix doesn't think twice. He hops to the bathroom and rinses out a cup and fills it and tosses the liquid back, and it's a sickly, coppery punch to the throat.

_How the hell did Anders convince Tyrol to part with any of this?_ he wonders, wheezing. He realizes he's out of breath for the first time in a long while.

 

_Day Twenty-Eight_  
Anders hasn't been sleeping well. Work is not going well either, of course: the whole fleet's on edge. Everyone seems to be walking in hope and despair, feeling the end swinging up near. It feels like there's so little time left. He hardly talks to anyone. Instead he pushes himself through the day, exhausts himself with exercise, and thinks far too much about Felix Gaeta.

As much of a gossip mill as the _Galactica_ is, he's surprised he didn't hear about the leg before he saw it. It would've saved him some embarrassment. Perhaps, Anders thinks, he should start talking to people. People who will actually speak to him in a civil manner. Instead he raids his stash and goes to Gaeta's door again. He doesn't understand it.

Gaeta doesn't look surprised to see him.

Anders does his best not to stare at the modified leg.

"Go ahead, look all you want," Gaeta says, hauling himself into a standing position. His voice is challenging, defensive. Gaeta's wearing uniform trousers with one leg scissored off, a tight tank top, no shoes--no shoe. His bare foot looks vulnerable next to the hoof-like modified Centurion foot. The metal gleams, inhuman, wrong; out of balance with Gaeta's slim body.

"What does it feel like?"

"I'm getting used to it," Gaeta says. "It doesn't hurt, much." He seems to want to say something else, but stops.

Anders nods. There's only one chair in Gaeta's quarters. He sits without asking. Gaeta seems to relax at that, his shoulders dropping. He awkwardly sits back down on his bunk. There's a book and several sheets of paper sprawled around him; Gaeta gathers up the papers and places them neatly into the book, setting it aside.

They sit awkwardly for a moment. Anders can't think of anything to say. _So, now you're part-Cylon, too,_ is right out. He remembers the bottle, holds it out. "More of the Chief's finest. I hope the other one didn't break."

"It's fine. In the cabinet," Gaeta gestures. "Crack the frakker open." Anders finds the half-full bottle and two clean classes in the cabinet, fills them, hands one to Gaeta. He drinks his own down fast and fills it again.

"How did you score this?"

Anders huffs out a laugh. "The Chief owed me a favor."

The talking comes easier when he's drunk, and he's getting there fast enough. He starts thinking and then talking about New Caprica, and what they did to Gaeta afterward, about how Gaeta nearly died. Gaeta, who risked everything to help the resistance.

"I feel really bad about all that," he says.

Gaeta looks up, confusion and anger written on his face. "Well, you should. You were all a bunch of assholes!"

"I know. I know." Anders drinks some more.

He wakes up on the floor of Gaeta's quarters. He must have fallen asleep there, no pillow, no blanket. Felix is asleep in the bunk above him, breathing quietly. Anders heaves himself up off the floor, feeling like hell, his neck cracking, his head pounding. He opens the door as silently as possible, and flees.

 

_Day Twenty-Nine_  
Felix has fallen in love with the leg. There's no other word for it – he feels stupidly, hastily, one-night-stand in-love. The leg feels good, better than good. Of course he's needed to adjust to it, to learn how to move again with his unbalanced body, more mass on the right side, but the leg compensates for the inertia, knows when to move. He knows that eventually he'll stop thinking about it, stop being constantly aware of it.

Clothing is still a problem. He has to pull his trousers on before he attaches the leg, because they won't fit over. But the harness that helps attach it – a complex halter of straps and clasps – fits better if he wears it under his clothes and against his skin. The harness chafes, too, and leaves raised red sores on what's left of his thigh.

And it's not only movement that's easier; the pain of the phantom leg seems to lessen when he's wearing the leg. There's some feedback mechanism there; he doesn't know how it works but he's curious. His fingers itch to take the leg apart, but he's also afraid to be without it. Du Rais gives him a hastily constructed mirror box to help with the phantom pain, awkwardly shows him how to use it. It doesn't seem very scientific, but she claims it works by retraining the brain through visual input. He doesn't use it, though; instead Gaeta finds himself returning to the leg itself. It serves as a mirror of sorts, albeit a distorted one.

Felix asks Du Rais where the leg came from; she either doesn't know or won't tell him. She asks him pointed questions about how the leg feels. Felix tries to answer honestly – he is a scientist, after all – but words fail him. As a scientist he can't tell her that he's become emotionally attached to a piece of Cylon technology, fallen in love with an inanimate object of dubious origin.

He's still far too embarrassed to wear the leg in the corridors. He knows that some of the others wonder why he's still on crutches; surely Du Rais or someone in the med lab or the science department has let something slip. Aren't they all waiting to see if he'll air his borrowed bastard limb in public? Well, almost all of them.

Ander's reaction gives Felix hope. Anders certainly has lost just as much if not more to the Cylons - he thinks pointedly of Kara and her strange intensity about the Cylon on the base star. If Anders can accept his leg, then hell. Maybe it'll just take time.

He thinks of Anders, of waking up and seeing him curled against the floor next to Felix's bunk, as though he was trying to sink through it. He'd thought about reaching down and touching the spiky mess of hair before his somewhat-addled brain reminded him _you'll fall out of bed._ That inner lie soothed him and he slept.

He tamps the mental image down and still finds himself rustling his papers and maps in restless frustration as he waits for Anders to arrive. He leaves the leg on long past his normal habit, and his thighs ache and itch. After a certain amount of time, the unspoken mantra becomes _if he comes._

Anders does.

It's later than usual. He's furtive with the door, jumping at the door clang like it's goosed him. Felix grins inwardly at the sight, and at the way Ander's eyes darken, like always, at the leg. _His_ leg. Felix rests a hand on the slick metal, trying (and pretty much failing) for nonchalance. He feels short of breath again, and desperately wishes to be drunk. _Don't worry,_ he chides himself, _that's what you and Anders do best. At least, so far._

It takes a little more booze, but Anders slumps on his bunk instead of in the chair. They are both so loose-mouthed and strangely comfortable in this drunk not-friendship; the way they can say sharp cruel true things that no friend would say to another is simultaneously painful and freeing. So Felix starts, and it devolves like it has since they began.

"You've got shit to mope about."

"Like you'd know," Anders laughs. "You're a ghost these days."

"What's with your wife?"

"None of your frakking business, you shit."

"Yeah, and I bet you both regret those tattoos. Whose idea was that?" Felix grabs Anders' arm in a moment of courage, looking at the beautiful wing inked there. It's masterful work. He leaves his hand there, cupped over Anders' bicep.

"Yeah, you're one to talk. Mr. Tiger Tattoo." Anders slurs the Ts a little.

Felix laughs. It's the first time he's laughed since before the amputation. When he laughs, Anders smiles a little, almost shyly.

Then Anders – Sam – touches the leg, rides his hand up over it with a soft, almost tender expression. And then his hand passes from metal to flesh, and his fingers press against Felix's knee, then thigh. His expression hardens slightly. He draws his hand back deliberately, drawing into himself.

"What's wrong?" Felix says.

Sam won't look at him. _Frak._ Felix tightens his grip on Anders' arm, a silent plea: _don't leave_. But Anders is getting up, moving away. He scrubs at his face and stares at the floor. "Do you hate me?" he says softly.

"No. Of course not. No."

"Why not?"

The question surprises Felix. He doesn't know the answer himself. Anders never meant to hurt him, that's probably it—he was a desperate man in a desperate moment, one of so many in this ragged existence they were all living. Sure, he wishes Anders had never fired that gun; but already his anger has faded down, replaced by or woven through with something else, with twisted up feelings about the man standing before him. Finally Felix says, "I think I used up all my hate on someone else," thinking of Baltar.

Anders makes a strangled sort of laugh. "Just so we're clear, you're not going to attack me with a pen, right?"

"You can hide all the pens if it makes you feel safer." Felix's voice is warmer, more amused than caustic.

Anders sits back down on the bunk. Felix takes a breath, feeling heady and drunk, and grabs Sam's neck.

But Anders backs away again, gods-_damn_, and looks at Felix with startled eyes.

"I'm not—-" Anders says.

"Oh no?" Felix's voice goes low and soft. "Then what are you?"

Anders flinches. In a moment Anders is up and out of his quarters, gone.

_Frak._

 

_Day Thirty-Four_  
He hasn't taken the leg off for a few days now. Parts of his thigh are rubbed raw, but other patches of skin are healing, and it feels good to have the constant support and weight. More and more he forgets it's not flesh.

Du Rais scribbles on his chart and gives him appointments with Cottle, the science lab, and with a psychiatrist. He notices she has more trouble looking at his leg now than before when it was a wrapped stump.

"Lots of amputee patients need help adjusting to the loss," she murmurs.

But he hasn't lost anything – not really, not anymore, has he? Felix doesn't know how to express this sentiment, but when he looks at Du Rais, he sees understanding reflected in her eyes along with apprehension and other unnamed things.

"Doc is especially interested in how you're progressing, Felix. He tells me you haven't made your last couple of appointments."

He shrugs. "I'll get to it. The goal was to get me back to work, right?" He takes pleasure in watching her lips twist.

"Yes. Yes, you're right. Just – _Felix!_"

He's out the door before she can continue, and he's halfway back to his quarters when he realizes, from the sudden leap in hostile and fearful stares, that he's finally done the unthinkable.

The thrum of the ship is all he hears, thundering in the sudden silence around him.

Then the mutters begin. Felix only catches bits of it, some _what the frak_ and _told you–true—yeah—a toaster lover_ and he slows down and looks at them, all these shipmates of his crowding against the walls: many of them commissioned with him – gods, how long ago that was – those who know him, those who don't know him, those who wanted to string him up and when they couldn't in good conscience do that, they left him more alone than he'd been on New Caprica with Gaius.

Unfortunately he also sees Anders, who as usual is skulking in a corner. Out of everything and everyone palpably present in the corridor, what Felix most feels is _his_ gaze.

Is that _pride?_ No. Not quite. Something close, though.

Felix pushes through the people and hurries back to his quarters, and if he puts a little more weight on his right leg, well. It's hard to believe that no one tried anything, that he escaped without even getting spit on. He spends most of the day working on the star charts Kara commandeered while on the _Demetrius_. He gets a call from Jessup in the genetics lab about Baltar's old Cylon detector test (funny how little it matters now) and they end up discussing Cylon machinery for the better part of an hour.

He passes the rest of the day alternating between physical exercise far beyond what Du Rais wants him to start (jumping rope, pushups, and some uncomfortable yoga positions) and rigorous study of Cylon mechanisms. He falls asleep somewhere in the middle of some mechanical substitute for abductor muscles.

There are fingers brushing his face. Felix cracks his eyes open to gleam of red, no, a wash of red over him and he's doused in it like light for a moment. Then it fades, and he's looking at the dull dimness of his quarters. His papers and books are spread over him like a blanket, and he can't find it in him to dislodge them and sit up.

Anders looms over him, his face so close and so unreadable.

"Do you know what you're getting yourself into?"

Felix doesn't ask what he means. Anders cleans some of the papers off and puts a hand on the leg – still attached, of course. And Felix can't let him get away with that so he slides his own hand down, brushes against Anders and _gods help me_ the metal is warm, hot even.

"I think I can handle it." He meets Anders' gaze. "Can you?"

Anders grins, and his eyes gleam redly. "I'm better equipped." He lets his hand drift up Felix's thigh, and then his hip and then his belly, and damn, it's been too long for any put-on show of reticence, even if his dick wasn't already merrily and obviously responding. Sam's hand rides up and up and over his neck – _frak_¬ – and he touches Felix's face.

"Other people are mirrors of ourselves," Sam says. "I read that somewhere."

"I have a mirror box," Felix offers stupidly. He can't think while Sam is touching him. And anyway he's not sure what Anders is saying. Mirrors? Dopplegangers? No. If Galactica is his mirror box, where is his leg?

"It's the singing," he whispers so softly Felix has to strain to hear it. "I can't stand it."

_I don't sing anymore,_ Felix wants to say, but Sam presses into him.

There are fingers brushing his face. He cracks his eyes open and there's no red light, only the dull dimness of his quarters. It's his papers that are brushing his face, and Sam isn't there. He displaces the papers with a wheeze. "That is just IT."

 

_Day Thirty-Six_  
Felix chases Anders down in the hangar bay. It's not somewhere he's used to being; he feels even more the outsider here, among the pilots and mechanics. When he first arrives, Anders is out on a training exercise. He finds a space of wall to lean against, a little in the way but mostly unobtrusive, and waits.

Anders looks good stepping out of his viper, smiling widely. He pats the shoulders of the people around him, such casual physical contact, a kind that Felix has always had trouble with. In this moment, Anders radiates charm and warmth and ease with himself. The celebrity Pyramid player emerges, Felix thinks wryly. Felix pushes himself off the wall and walks onto the wide hangar floor, feeling exposed in more ways than one. His metal leg does make strange noises, but here among the machinery and the vipers, the noises fit in perfectly, anonymous.

Anders looks up and sees him coming; his face changes in complex ways. Fear? Anticipation?

Neither of them seem to know what to say to one another. Felix wants to say, _Why haven't you come by,_ or _I've been dreaming about you_, but here they are in the hangar deck; anyone could be listening. They stare at each other in silence for a moment. Then Felix says, "I think you should buy me a drink."

Anders quirks an eyebrow.

"It's the least you can do for the guy whose leg you shot off."

They've gotten in the habit of provoking each other, so Anders doesn't flinch, he only smiles a little. "What did they do with the leg, anyway?"

"Oh, they planted it in one of the greenhouses," Felix says in his driest tones. "It's fertilizing tomatoes as we speak."

Felix starts to walk, and Anders falls in beside him. They walk in silence for a while, taking lesser-used corridors – not to the bar, but back to Felix's private quarters, as if pulled there by gravity. Felix feels his pulse quicken.

They've almost established a routine, and the routine begins with: start drinking immediately. Felix pours a glass of wine for each of them, and tells Anders to drink slowly. "This is my third-favorite wine," he warns. "I've been saving it. So don't guzzle it, and for gods' sake don't spill it."

"Saving it? For what?"

Felix shrugs. "For when it was needed." He breathes in the scent of the wine, sips slowly, lets it sit on his tongue before swallowing it down. "So is the problem," he says, "that you're still married?"

Anders doesn't look at him. "Not really. I haven't even spoken to Kara for weeks, now. It's like she's… not mine anymore. Not mine at all." He sounds so resigned, so much like _failure_, that Felix can barely stand it. He pours a little more wine into each of their glasses.

"So what, then? You haven't slept with guys before?"

Anders chuckles. "When I played Pyramid? I slept with _everyone_."

"Braggart." Felix sets his wine glass on the foldout table, moves to where Anders is standing, and kisses him briefly, experimentally. It's awkward, like he's kissing a statue, albeit a warm one. He thinks he feels a tremor go through Anders. He wills himself to not back down, to not be intimidated. Anders coughs.

"You don't think it might be because I shot off your leg? That maybe I feel, I don't know, that could be a hang up?"

"Might be, if it weren't for the shiny new leg," Felix says. "Besides, I forgive you."

"Gods," Sam says, sounding positively _anguished_. "I didn't ask you to forgive me."

"Too bad." Felix kisses him again, more impatient this time, more fervent. Sam finally gets with the program and puts one hand on Felix's side, the other fumbling with the wine glass, setting it down almost carefully, only sloshing it a little. Felix can't bring himself to makes a snide remark, not when Sam is finally, _finally_ on the right track. He steers them toward the bunk, pushes Sam into a sitting position.

"Touch the leg," Felix says. It should be nothing, not after he's practically jumped the guy, but still, he feels a bit shaky. "I dare you."

"Kinky," Sam teases, but he does reach out and grab the metal calf, wrapping both palms around it. Felix flashes back to his dream, puts his hand next to Sam's hands, but the metal isn't hot like he dreamt it. _Not yet, anyway_; and he's not sure where that thought came from. The dream-memories keep overlaying his vision, confusing his senses, as Sam touches Felix's face and scrabbles at his clothes.

\-----

"What you need," Sam says, a while later, "are pants with snaps all up and down the side seam. Saw some of those once, this groupie girl, really attractive. And those pants came off and on really fast."

Felix sags back and laughs and laughs. Anders flushes at the sound of it, inordinately pleased, warmth filling up his chest. He busies himself with reaching across for their glasses, and he manages not to fumble them. They drink slow and in silence for a while, and finally he asks what he's been meaning to ask all along, "Where did you learn it? The song?"

Felix doesn't answer right away. In fact he doesn't answer at all, but opens his mouth and sings. No sad ballad this time, but something slow and sexy and joyful, in a language Sam doesn't understand.

End


End file.
